Swans have long been viewed as a symbol of fidelity and everlasting love. But they are in fact cheating philanderers that regularly flee the nest for extramarital sex, Australian researchers reveal. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing has shown that one in six cygnets is the product of an illicit encounter, smashing the birds’ monogamous image.read more | digg story

Crows make tools, play tricks on each other, and caw among kin in a dialect all their own. These are just some of the signs presented in a recent book that point to an unexpected similarity between the wise birds and humans.read more | digg story

Extra testosterone makes the dark-eyed junco songbird sing more sweetly, fly farther, and mate more often. They make more chicks and don’t even have to take care of them. Sounds like the good life, but then they die young.read more | digg story

NASA is trying to rid the Kennedy Space Center of vultures after the shuttle struck one of the large birds during lift-off last year. The space agency, which is located within a protected natural area, has set up a ‘road-kill posse’ to clean up the vultures’ food source.read more | digg story

Researchers in New Zealand say that analysis of the world’s oldest penguin fossils confirms that some birds survived the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.read more | digg story